A Green also ran second in Kent North which had been affected by an RCMP attack on protesters from Elsipogtog First Nation[3] that resulted in literally "hundreds of complaints against RCMP" [4] and international press attention [5] to the RCMP position that resisting extraction of shale gas in Canada could be considered "a potential security threat.[5] While some NDP candidates challenged their party positions[6] the Greens consistently opposed Alward, SWN and the RCMP positions and demanded a ban on shale gas in New Brunswick, which after the election Premier Gallant delivered.[7][8] The Greens were also the only party opposing the TransCanadaEnergy East pipeline,[9] which was another major issue [10]

Fracking was a major issue in the election as a whole. Most commentators described the election as a referendum on it.[11][12]

Polling in the weeks leading up to the campaign gave the Liberals a wide lead over the governing Progressive Conservatives. Some commentators openly speculated about whether the Liberals were on track to repeat the 1987 provincial election, when they won every seat in the legislative assembly.[13] As the campaign progressed, however, the gap in popular support between the two parties narrowed significantly. Some attributed this in part to a television interview with CBC New Brunswick anchor Harry Forestell in which Gallant gave inaccurate numbers relating to his proposal for a tax increase on the province's wealthiest residents.[14] In the final poll of the campaign, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives were tied at 40 per cent support each.[15]

June 27, 2014 - PC MLA Bev Harrison announces he will seek re-election as a New Democrat,[24] he leaves the PC caucus to sit as an independent.[25]

August 18, 2014 - Premier Alward meets with Lieutenant-Governor Graydon Nicholas who grants the premier's request to dissolve the legislature effective August 21, 2014 for a general election to be held September 22, 2014.[26]

August 21, 2014 - New Brunswick legislature dissolved by the lieutenant-governor.[26]

The election marked the first time that the province used electronic vote tabulation machines from Dominion Voting in Ontario in a provincial election. They had previously been used in New Brunswick municipal elections.[1] On election night, the machines displayed vote totals which were verified by Elections New Brunswick officials and entered into a province-wide database for the media. By 11:45 PM, these unverified numbers were to have been replaced by totally machine-reported numbers from the tabulators themselves with no human interventions or errors possible to distort results. It was "a program processing the initial results that had a glitch", not the tabulators themselves, according to officials.[27]

Elections New Brunswick grew uncomfortable with the human involvement and influence of the unevenly tabulated results. It brought the results reporting to a standstill as counts were reverified by hand before further resignations or concessions were triggered.

At 10:45 p.m. Atlantic time, Elections New Brunswick officially suspended the results reporting count, with 17 ridings still undeclared, while it investigated the delay.[28] It called for over sixty tabulator count devices to be brought to central locations for verification without uploading via Internet and thus without relying on the flawed reporting program. However at no time was there an allegation of major fraud by any party or public official.

As a result of this controversy, both the Progressive Conservatives and the People's Alliance of New Brunswick called for a hand count of all ballots, with the former refusing to concede the election until the following day.[1] Despite this, Michael Quinn, the province's chief electoral officer, has said that no recount is necessary.[1]

This was largely reported as a technological and competence "fiasco" with implications not just for tabulators but for voting machine and Internet voting in the future.[1] Later, recounts were held in 7 of 49 ridings and the results were upheld with variations of no more than 1 vote per candidate per riding.[29]

New boundaries are in effect as a result of an electoral redistribution replacing the districts used in the 2006 and 2010 elections. Candidates had to file their nomination papers by September 2, 2014 to appear on the ballot.[58]

Legend

bold denotes cabinet minister or party leader

italics denotes a potential candidate who has not received his/her party's nomination